For remote villages in India, government relief efforts fall short

PUDUKUPPAM, India -- The tragedy of this tiny fishing hamlet is its location.

The Asian tsunami killed 110 of its 1,200 inhabitants, and destroyed or damaged most of its homes and boats. Yet residents of this remote coastal village 100 miles south of Chennai, the capital of Tamil Nadu state, say that more than three weeks after the disaster they've received only minimal aid from the government.

''All we've got so far is two weeks supply of rice, cooking oil, one pair of clothes, and 4,000 rupees," or $90, said Rajalingam, 25, who lost five family members and his fishing vessel to the waves. ''How is that enough for all this?" he asked, gesturing to the rubble of crumbled homes and cracked boats that still lie uncleared by the now peaceful sea.

Part of the reason this village has been overlooked is that it is about 15 miles off the area's narrow, two-lane main road, said Sivagami, a project coordinator with the Tamil Nadu Agricultural Laborers Movement, a sociopolitical group working to improve the conditions of marginal farmers.

''Government fellows don't like to go more than 5 miles off the main road to get to remote places like this," said Sivagami, who like many people here goes by one name. ''In place after place we are seeing the same thing: People are begging us for basic things."

The theme of nongovernmental organizations, or NGOs, filling the void left by ineffective government relief operations is repeated often.

Amar Jhotti Nayak is the Chennai-based regional manager for emergency relief with Action Aid, a South African NGO that is running relief camps in the area. He said there was no deliberate inaction on the part of the government, which he said is doing a good job in some areas.

''Local officials are overwhelmed and confused," he said. ''They don't know what to do and there isn't much coordination taking place."

It riles Nayak and others that when the tsunami hit, the Indian government said it was fully equipped and capable of managing relief efforts, and refused to accept any international relief aid and even assisted its neighbors. But in remote villages, such as MGR Nagar, 20 miles south of Pudukuppam, such ambitions are being tested against the weight of a moribund administrative system and ancient social stigmas.

Following the tsunami, government officials here have been quick to execute straightforward functions, such as inoculating people against cholera and handing out compensation checks to the families of those who died. Now, there are complications.

Kaliappan, 31, a fisherman in MGR Nagar, said that although local police found his wife's body along a beach more than two weeks ago, he has yet to get his compensation check for $2,300 from the government. That's because the police station where he reported her missing is different from the police station where her body was found, and the two have yet to reconcile their paperwork.

Selladharai, the village leader, said that when he and other residents have tried to approach local officials with their village's problems, they've been ''ignored and harassed."

That's partly because they are ''tribals," India's indigenous people, who are considered ''untouchables" under the Hindu caste system, said V.M. Karunagaran, an environmentalist with a foundation that runs a mangrove preservation program in collaboration with local residents.

Although the influence of the Hindu caste system has faded since the government outlawed it in 1950, its structures of prejudice still exist in many regions.

Along India's southeastern coast, where the tsunami struck, tribals and other untouchables, who call themselves Dalits, have been forced to live in inland villages, while upper caste fishermen occupied prime seafront property. Traditionally, the fishermen would bring in the catch, and the tribals and Dalits would sell it.

The damage suffered by most inland Dalit and tribal villages was less than that suffered by the fishing villages. But their loss of income was just as severe.

Dalit and tribal agricultural land, on which they cultivate crops such as groundnuts and tamarind, were also destroyed by the salty seawater that rushed inland. Yet the government was slow to grant Dalit and tribal villages any temporary relief, and when it did, it was half the $90 per person given in fishing villages.

''The impact on them was only indirect, not direct," said Selvaraj, the village administration officer for Killi South, an area not far from MGR Nagar.

But many Dalit villages, such as Keripuppam, which is just half a mile from Pudukuppam, where Rajalingam lives, say they haven't received any aid. So on Wednesday, irate villagers armed with this and other complaints converged on the local district administration office to try to meet Thiru S. Ramachandran, a minister in the Tamil Nadu state government.

Most weren't allowed to meet the minister, and his security detail prevented journalists from asking questions or taking photographs. Instead, the minister sat closeted inside the office with a handful of men, while a group of women protested outside against the government's decision to give aid to the men in families, even in households where women were the breadwinners.

''The problem is that after some days of good relief work people are returning to their old attitudes,'' Sivagami said. ''Government officials here think they are our kings, not our servants."